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Wednesday, February 13, 2013

President Barack Obama tonight mentioned Apple during his State of the
Union speech to Congress, mentioning the fact that Apple will again be building Macs in the United States in 2013. CEO Tim Cook disclosed that plan back in December.

Though he didn't mention which line of computers would be made in the U.S., rumors said Apple would begin manufacturing of the Mac mini there, bringing some 200 jobs to the country.

Our first priority is making America a magnet for new jobs and manufacturing.

After shedding jobs for more than 10 years, our manufacturers have added
about 500,000 jobs over the past three. Caterpillar is bringing jobs
back from Japan. Ford is bringing jobs back from Mexico. After locating
plants in other countries like China, Intel is opening its most advanced
plant right here at home. And this year, Apple will start making Macs
in America again.

Tim Cook attended the State of the Union,
sitting in the First Lady's box -- a frequent location for guests who
are mentioned in the President's speech. He sat behind and to the side of the First Lady, just behind the Second Lady, Dr. Jill Biden.

After the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal took their turns this weekend relaying little tidbits about the Apple watch program, it is now Bloomberg’s turn.
In a story this evening, the financial news site posted that Apple had
100 product designers working on the iWatch program and it is growing.

Apple Inc. has a team of about 100 product designers
working on a wristwatch-like device that may perform some of the
computing tasks now handled by the iPhone and iPad, two people familiar
with the company’s plans said.
The team, which has grown in the past year, includes managers,
members of the marketing group and software and hardware engineers who
previously worked on the iPhone and iPad, said the people, who asked not
to be named because the plans are private. The team’s size suggests
Apple is beyond the experimentation phase in its development, said the
people.

There is lots of both real and speculative information
about Apple’s iWatch project floating around at the moment. So much so
that it sounds like we’re ramping up to a launch in the coming year or
so.

Bloomberg dropped two names of managers on the watch team: James
Foster and Achim Pantfoerder. Interestingly, we understand that Foster
reports to Bob Mansfield (head of chips and wireless), and not to Dan
Riccio (head of hardware), which lines up with earlier claims that
Mansfield is very interested in wearable technologies.

Friday, February 8, 2013

Brightwire
translates a report from the Chinese media which claims that Apple will
be launching both an iPhone 5S and a 5" iPhone 6 this year:

A source told Chinese mobile phone information site Laoyaoba.com that
he has seen the iPhone 5S and iPhone 6 at Apple's suppliers. Both models
may be released in 2013, according to the website's microblog on
Thursday evening.

The source noted that the iPhone 5S resembles the iPhone 5, and the five-inch iPhone 6 is lighter and thinner.

This
rumor adds to a chorus of reports that Apple is seriously considering a
larger form-factor iPhone in the near future. While early reports had suggested that such a model wouldn't see the light of day in 2013, later reports continue to point to a 4.8"-5.0" device coming soon from Apple.

All these rumors have generated a significant amount of speculation
on how such a larger model might make sense in Apple's iPhone lineup,
especially when comparing it to Samsung's current offerings.

Due to Apple's use of Chinese manufacturers and the need to prototype
their designs, it's possible that all of these sightings could be true,
yet Apple may still not launch such a device in 2013. If Apple does
begin ramping up production for 2013, we expect we'll see parts of this
larger device to also begin to leak out of China.

The statement made by Apple comes in response to a high-profile lawsuit
filed earlier in the day by Greenlight and the fund's manager, David
Einhorn. That complaint accused Apple of having a "problem" of hoarding
cash in a manner that is a disservice to investors.

For its part, Apple said it welcomes Greenlight's views, though it
disagrees with the fund's take on "Proposal 2," an item up for vote at
the company's annual shareholder meeting later this month.

"Contrary to Greenlight's statements, the adoption of Proposal #2 would not prevent the issuance of preferred stock," Apple's statement reads. "Currently, Apple's articles of incorporation provide for the issuance of 'blank check' preferred stock by the Board of Directors without Shareholder approval."

With rumors of the fifth-generation iPad taking on a design similar to that of the iPad mini, Macrumors once again commissioned CiccareseDesign to create some fresh renderings offering a very good idea of what the updated iPad will look like.

These images are based on the leaked iPad 5 enclosure, which we have reason to believe is indeed real.

The new iPad shell was shown alongside an iPad mini enclosure, providing
CiccareseDesign a frame of reference from which to take measurements
and produce these mockups. We believe the relative sizes shown in the
following images offer an accurate view of how the upcoming iPad 5 will
compare in size.

As has been described in rumors and calculated from the rear shell
photos, the fifth-generation iPad appears to be notably smaller than the
current model, adopting significantly thinner side bezels in portrait
orientation and slightly smaller top and bottom bezels.

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Apple today announced that music fans have purchased and downloaded more than 25 billion songs from the iTunes Store (www.itunes.com),
the world’s most popular online music, TV and movie store.

The 25
billionth song, “Monkey Drums” (Goksel Vancin Remix) by Chase Buch, was
purchased by Phillip Lüpke from Germany. As the downloader of the 25
billionth song, Phillip will receive a €10,000 iTunes® Gift Card.

“We are grateful to our users whose passion for music over the past 10
years has made iTunes the number one music retailer in the world,” said
Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and
Services. “Averaging over 15,000 songs downloaded per minute, the iTunes
Store connects music fans with their favorite artists, including global
sensations like Adele and Coldplay and new artists like The Lumineers,
on a scale we never imagined possible.”

The iTunes Store is the world’s most popular music store with a catalog
of over 26 million songs and over 25 billion songs downloaded, and is
available in 119 countries.

The iTunes Store is the best way for
iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac and PC users to legally discover, purchase
and download music online. All music on the iTunes Store comes in iTunes
Plus, Apple’s DRM-free format with high-quality 256 kbps AAC encoding
for audio virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings.

iTunes in the Cloud lets you download your previously purchased iTunes
music to your devices at no additional cost, and new music purchases can
be downloaded automatically to your iOS devices.

Following the news that Apple is to discontinue its Mac Pro line in Europe
due to new regulatory standards, Apple is reportedly prepping a new Mac
Pro product for spring 2013.

The news comes from Apple reseller France
Systemes (via Mac4Ever & Macg.co), an Apple Authorized Reseller and Certified Education Center in France with 17 years in the business, which claimed in a recent newsletter to customers that Apple has confirmed the discontinuation of Mac Pros in the country would only be temporary.

Apple would officially stop selling the Mac Pro in Europe on March 1 due to a new standard set to kick in on that date known as “Amendment 1 of regulation IEC 60950-1, Second Edition.”
If Apple were to release a new Mac Pro in the spring, it could be an
all-new model (something that is definitely a long time coming).

If it
isn’t Apple’s first major refresh of its Mac Pro line since 2010, Apple
could potentially update components of the Mac Pro to meet the
new standards and continue selling to the professional market in the
European Union.

In a discussion with Forbes,
Cydia appstore administrator Jay Freeman revealed that the evasi0n
jailbreak had been installed 800,000 times within six hours of its Monday release.

By Tuesday, Cydia had been installed 1.7 million times, and according to a chart tweeted by Freeman, Cydia was receiving 14,000 hits per minute at peak download times.

The demand for the jailbreak resulted in site wide traffic problems,
causing Freeman's server to go offline several times. To put it in
perspective, that's approximately 1,200 Cydia downloads per minute.

Evasi0n is the first significant jailbreak since the widely used Redsn0w
iOS 5.1.1 untethered jailbreak. Hacking Apple devices is a detailed
process, which is why jailbreaks are few and far between.

The evasi0n jailbreak is the first untethered jailbreak for the iPhone 5
and for devices running iOS 6.x. Evasi0n is available for OS X,
Windows, and Linux on the evasi0n website.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

As promised,
Apple’s new 128GB iPad has become available today. While in-store
availability is still unknown, the tablet can be ordered online with an
estimated shipping time of 1-3 business days.

The new 128GB iPad is available in both black and white, and in
either Wi-Fi-only or Wi-Fi + Cellular versions. The Wi-Fi model costs
$799 and the + Cellular (LTE for many) model’s a hefty $929.

Although Apple doesn’t provide specific country availability, the 128GB option has been in every web store we’ve looked at. And all show similar ship times: 1-3 days for Wi-Fi, 3-5 days for +Cellular.

Apple caught a lot of people off guard with this off-cycle tablet
release, especially since there’s nothing new about it outside of its
increased storage. A redesigned iPad 5 is expected to land in October.

The findings come from Web analytics firm StatCounter, which saw Apple dethrone Nokia in January for the first time ever as the once-dominant vendor's
marketshare dropped over 15 percent year-over-year. It should be noted
that tablet computers like the iPad were not counted in the study,
though Apple's iPod touch and other portable devices were included.

While a majority of top ten vendors saw declines over 2012, including
Apple's net loss from 28.67 percent to 25.86 percent at the end of last
month, Nokia suffered the greatest drop-off, slipping from 37.67 percent
of the market to 22.15 percent. Of the top three vendors, Samsung
showed the only 12-month gain, rising from 14.84 percent to 22.69
percent over the same period. The performance was enough to see the
Korean company squeeze past Nokia to retain the number two spot overall.

“It’s good and bad news for Apple,” said StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen.
“Apple has been handed the number one spot despite its falling usage
share. A decline in Nokia usage from January 2012 to January 2013 means
the Finnish company ceded the top spot to Apple. Samsung, in contrast to
Apple, has seen an increase in its usage share since January 2012.”

The analytics company's research arm, StatCounter Global Stats, compiled
the data based on over 15 billion page views per month to the
StatCounter network of more than three million websites.

It was reported at the end of January that Apple's iPhone accounted for 25.1 percent of all smartphones worldwide as shipments rose 46.9 percent to 136.8 million units in 2012, up from 93.1 million in 2011.